Art Modell, Stealer of Hearts, Is Dead

A still-bitter Cleveland fan runs his team's former owner into the ground

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Art Modell, the scumbag who stole the Cleveland Browns, began eternity in Hell on Thursday. He died in Baltimore at the age of 87, to the dismay of a legion of Browns fans hoping he'd suffer another decade of lonely, agonized decrepitude.

Reports that a cloud of locusts rose from the lawn of Johns Hopkins Hospital upon his demise and vanished have not yet been confirmed.

Modell bought the Browns in 1961. During his first few years as the team's owner, he fired Paul Brown, arguably the most influential and innovative pro football coach in NFL history, and essentially forced Jim Brown, the league's most dominant offensive force, into retirement at the age of 29. These weren't merely horrid football moves; they revealed a petty, blustering fool whose need to feel more powerful and important than his underlings mattered most to him.

According to his New York Times obituary, "For nearly 35 years, Cleveland idolized him"; this is patent nonsense. By 1995, when Modell struck a secret deal to move the team to Baltimore, two generations of Browns fans knew him for what he was: a failure, a fraud, a Brooklyn-born shill long on promises and civic awards but perennially short on delivery. The Cleveland Browns, born in 1946, were the town's most precious treasure not due to Art Modell, but despite him.

Modell has long been celebrated as a pioneer whose vision of television's importance to the NFL was crucial to forging its stunning success. In truth, Modell was demonstrably one of the worst businessmen in league history. He went broke in Cleveland, where he owned the stadium filled each game by the most loyal fans in pro sports. He went bust again in Baltimore, and was forced to sell the team. In a league with a level economic playing field seeded with huge and equally shared revenue, in two cities known for the fierce devotion of their fans, Art Modell ran two NFL teams into the ground.

After stealing the Browns, Art Modell never returned to Cleveland. He was too much the coward to show his face even in Canton, home of pro football's Hall of Fame and 60 miles south, where he devoutly wished to be honored. That he has never managed to earn enough votes for admission is a fitting tribute to his enduring villainy.